As the Ma’Varok whose identity – and corpse – Esperanza borrowed happened to be on night watch duty on that second night, it was easy enough for her to slip out into the woods nearby and plan the assault they would execute the following day. Despite the relative lack of opposition from the base’s guards, they still planned things out to ensure the greatest odds of success for what they intended to do.

Only five of them would actually assault the base itself: Esperanza, Resitia, Iryl, and two of Ani’s warriors who happened to be pure-blooded humans or close enough to pass for one. They would ransack and demolish the base, taking what useful and valuable things they could with them and burning the rest, while slaughtering most of the guards, conveniently leaving a plausible witness alive to see the human perpetrators of the assault.

The rest of the group would fan out and encircle the base and make sure that nobody escaped alive, so that the only source of information the demons would have about the assault would be the witness they’d deliberately – but plausibly – leave behind.

As for the assault itself, they were in no hurry, so they planned to do it a couple hours after midnight the following night, when most of the guards not on duty would be in deep sleep. The caution was very likely superfluous, given how only the base’s commander would even be able to give Iryl some semblance of resistance, but they hoped that by acting the way they did, it would convince the demons that it was done by a group of human infiltrators trying to stay undiscovered.

Esperanza returned to her post with none the wiser after she confirmed her plan with the rest of the group, and waited patiently as soon it would be time for them to make their first move out of hopefully many that would change the way the war was going.

As it was, the humans were defending well, but they were on the backfoot overall, as the demons had more populace to draw from and larger areas to produce food for their armies. Because of that, Esperanza and the rest intended to primarily sabotage the demons at first, until the humans manage to gain the upper hand. By that time, they’d switch to harassing the humans, and so on to keep the war going on and thus weakening both sides at once.

Just around noon the next day, a supply caravan arrived at the base and asked for various items to be loaded up for the frontlines. It was pretty much the normal thing to happen at the supply base. Esperanza learned from the others that the caravan would likely take most of the night to be loaded up properly and would only depart the next day.

That added another thirty or so people to the base’s hundred defenders, but Esperanza felt that it wouldn’t affect the plan much. Out of the people from the caravan, most of them were drivers, who were clearly not combatants, and out of the ten guards they had, only the captain was even at the middle levels of the third tier, with his second-in-command being a low-level third tier and the rest being second tiers.

None of them would be more than a speed bump to a fourth tier combatant.

Almost as if it was scheduled, the wagons of the caravan were finished loading by nightfall, but the drivers and guards chose to spend the night in the base. It was a normal thing, as they wished for some better place to rest after several days on the road. They just had no idea that the innocent decision had also sealed their fates all at once.

A couple hours after midnight, Iryl, Resitia, and two of Ani’s warriors struck the camp from four directions. Those with ranged skills like Ilavakide and Dai’Vasy as well as a few more of Ani’s warriors also struck from the cover of the forest and took out most of the sentries on night watch duty before they could make a voice, which meant that the first shouts of alarm were only sounded after the four entered the base.

Meanwhile, Esperanza shed the corpse she had been using as a disguise within the barracks where she pretended to sleep. There were around a dozen guards who shared that barracks, so Esperanza silenced them permanently with her dagger before they could react to the commotion outside, each one killed silently by a blade that opened up their throats.

She had thought about how she should fight while keeping her human guise and had decided to mostly cover herself under hoods and cloaks not unlike a [Rogue] would. She kept most of her form human, other than her right arm which was mostly a facade as most of her flesh formed a long, rope-like appendage that held her dagger.

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A rogue-type class that used a dagger tied to a long rope shouldn’t be too far out for this world’s common sense, she felt.

When Esperanza exited the barrack, she noticed that the camp was in chaos. Some people were running to and fro like chickens without heads. Others were grouping up under the call of their superior officers, while yet others were fighting – and dying – against the intruders. The only place where she spotted actual fighting was to the east, where the head of the caravan’s guards along with three of his subordinates were fighting for their lives against Iryl.

The other six of the caravan’s guards already lay dead on the floor around them.

Groups of the base’s guards were being massacred by Ani’s warriors to the north and west, while to the south, Esperanza saw how Resitia took on the base’s commander, who was the highest level demon present, and easily skewered him through with her spear in only a few exchanges. At the sight of the commander’s death, the nearby demons fled for their lives, only for most of them to be rewarded by a stab in the back before they could run far.

Esperanza whipped out her rope-like appendage with the dagger held tight on its end like it was tied to it almost nonchalantly as she walked past several guards who were now alarmed by her presence. Neither the second tier guards nor their third tier captain stood a chance as the blade of the dagger slit their throats open before they could even take a step towards her. She left them bleeding their lifeblood out from their slit throats as she continued her stroll through the base.

Within a few minutes, Esperanza had reached the base commander’s tent and ransacked it for anything that might be of use, casually throwing a burning piece of wood at the tent as she left. From the corner of her eye she noticed how one of Ani’s warriors, a burly man nearly as large as a Ma’Varok, overturned the loaded wagons, crushing several of the drivers beneath their own wagons.

She noticed that one of them seemed to have survived the mess, though he was pinned beneath the wagon. Given that the wagons were far enough away from the tents and other buildings in the base to not catch on fire while the base burned, Esperanza gave a discreet signal to that warrior to not overdo it, designating that lucky driver to be their “witness” to the assault.

Maybe thirty or more of the base’s defenders fled in fear after they saw their commander die helplessly, impaled by Resitia’s spear. None of the five within the base bothered to chase after them, as they knew that those outside would take care of those runaways. Instead, they focused their efforts on those still within the base and fighting back.

Esperanza herself kept her eyes open while she searched the base for one particular demon that should be a priestess of some sort, and thus was the most likely to be able to identify them as being aligned with Oldies instead of just being humans. Despite her search, though, she couldn’t find that priestess, even while she took the lives of the demons that crossed her path with her dagger.

If she had to be honest, “fighting” against these demons felt more like she was bullying them, as they simply had no chance whatsoever against the five intruders in their midst.

After some searching, Esperanza finally found that demon priestess, dead with half of her body crushed to minced meat within the tent she slept in. Apparently the bulky warrior from Ani’s entourage she saw earlier had leapt directly into the base from the outside and landed on that tent by complete accident. The impact of his landing had instantly killed the demon priestess before she could so much as utter a word of warning.

Esperanza could only shake her head at that demon priestess and her awful luck, though at least the woman’s death made things easier for her group, since there was no longer anyone who could identify them easily as aligned to Oldies. Of course the other demons could do that as well, but the only ones who got close enough to do that were too dead to say anything about it.

Just to be safe, Esperanza then searched the entire base once more to ensure that the only survivors were the only ones they intended to survive, people who have only witnessed what they had been allowed to see on purpose. She discovered a couple demons who still clung to life despite gruesome injuries and put them out of their misery while she made the round.

Ani’s warriors and Resitia had stood near the now-burning walls of the camp in the directions they had entered from, keeping watch to make sure that nobody was attempting to escape detection while Esperanza made her rounds. It was honestly unfair since she had [Soul Sight] and [Soul Sense], which pretty much made it impossible for anyone to hide from her.

By the time Esperanza made her way to the east side, she saw that Iryl had also finished with the demons she was fighting against, with little more to show other than a couple light cuts on her body. While the demons were more experienced than her, the girl had a rarer class, which gave her all the advantage in every other possible way. That allowed her to take on many of them all by herself and win.

While there were more escapees from her side because she had taken longer to deal with her opponents, it was of minimal concern, as the group had taken that into consideration. Ani herself and some of her highest leveled warriors lay in wait within the forest in that direction, and the odds of some second or third tier demons escaping from them was nil.

Once Esperanza made a round around the base and made certain that the only survivor was that one lucky wagon driver, she had the other four gather near the middle of the base. Of course, she made sure that they were “coincidentally” positioned in a place where that wagon driver could see them from where he was pinned in place.

Esperanza had already jolted the man’s soul lightly, which woke him up from unconsciousness, and the demon man was fortunately clever enough to keep his silence and even tried to slow his breathing as much as possible, out of fear of being found out. That was good, as a witness who thought he had been lucky to survive would work better for their intentions anyway.

The five of them then put on a show of discussing with each other where that demon could see them, with Esperanza making several gestures with her hand pointing further west. By their best estimation, it would be at least a couple days before what they did was discovered, and including the time it would take to relay a message, they should have enough time to strike at another target before the warning could be given.